


Blood Red Sequins

by lubilu17



Series: Boosh universe [2]
Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Dysphoria, Genderqueer Vince, Implied Murder, Vince centric, its another sad one lads, mentions of domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 23:00:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15229872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lubilu17/pseuds/lubilu17
Summary: He’s a young child when he first tries on a dress, it’s his mother’s. It’s his mother’s and it’s red and sparkly. It feels weird, like it’s missing fabric between the legs, the sequins scratch his chest slightly, and because it’s his mother’s the sleeves hand down his arms and the hem trails around his feet. His mother is smiling at him as he spins around, feeling the material twirling around him. He feels like one of the princesses in the fairy tales his mother reads to him to help him sleep, he feels right.





	Blood Red Sequins

He’s a young child when he first tries on a dress, it’s his mother’s. It’s his mother’s and it’s red and sparkly. It feels weird, like it’s missing fabric between the legs, the sequins scratch his chest slightly, and because it’s his mother’s the sleeves hand down his arms and the hem trails around his feet. His mother is smiling at him as he spins around, feeling the material twirling around him. He feels like one of the princesses in the fairy tales his mother reads to him to help him sleep, he feels right. Other than the fact that the dress is his mother’s size rather than his.

He almost asked his mother to put some makeup on his face as well like she does in the morning, Vince likes to sit and watch his mother put smudges of colour around her eyes, draw dark black lines above her eyelashes. He doesn’t like how on some days when it’s been particularly bad she has to cover the bruises around her neck with liquid that is the same colour as her skin normally. He likes to sit on his parents bed and watch his mother paint her face. She would never paint his though, no matter how nicely he asked, no matter how many times he said please (even though she’d once told him that she’d do anything for him if he said please). 

They only do this when Vince’s dad is out of the house, when he’s down at the pub. They only play with jewellery when he’s out of the house, they only play princess games when he’s out of the house. They’ve worked up to Vince trying on a dress, his dad’s away, so there’s absolutely no chance of him finding out that his son is dancing in the living room wearing a deep red sequined dress.

Vince feels excited wearing his mother’s dress and can’t understand why he can’t wear it all the time as it feels better than having to wear the football shorts with the horrible feeling fabric.

 

He’s thirteen and he’s alone for the first time in what seems like days. He’s alone in a car and there’s so many people outside. He’s alone and the sirens outside the car are deafening. There are people shouting at each other, one voice sticks out from all of the others, it’s a shout he’s heard so many times-too many times. He barely turns his head to the side to see his father being dragged by the handcuffs that surround his wrists to the car in front of Vince and if he focuses hard enough he can see the blood that still stains his hands. The blood that stains Vince’s hands. It stains his hands, it stains his clothes, it stained his face where his mother cradled him. He’s covered in blood, his mother’s blood, and he can’t breathe anymore. It’s too much and he can hear his heart beating in his ears and suddenly he’s not alone.

Suddenly there’s another person in the car with him, holding him, stopping him from rocking forwards and hitting his head in the seat in front. There’s a voice telling him to calm down, that it’s going to be okay, it will all be fine, Vince is never going to have to see his father again, it’s over he’s safe. He’s safe. He’s safe. He repeats the mantra in his head until he slowly begins to calm down enough to breathe properly again. The same voice tells him to try and get some sleep, he’s going to need it, it’s going to be a long couple of days.

He doesn’t sleep. He can’t sleep, every time he almost drops off he can see her body, feel her body, see the knife, feel the cold of the metal and the heat of her blood. He closes his eyes to keep the policemen driving the car happy. He hears the same voice from earlier talking to his partner, asking how a man can do that to his wife and son. Son. Son. It doesn’t feel right. His mother never called him her son, it was always Little Vincey or Princess when they were alone. Son feels uncomfortable, it feels wrong, like they’re not really talking about Vince anymore, like they’re discussing someone Vince had never met. He digs his nails into his wrists and tries to see himself as his mother’s son, his father’s son, because no matter how cruel his father might have been Vince still doesn’t want to disappoint him by not being his son.

The excitement of trying on his first dress has all but disappointment, his hands and clothes stained the same colour of the silk that once surrounded him, made him feel safe, now he just feels alone in a car full of people.

 

He’s fourteen when he decides to grow out his hair for the first time. He doesn’t mind the looks he gets at school, not that he’s really friends with anybody at school, they all already think he’s a weirdo. When the other kids at the foster home start to pull it he stands as tall as he can and remembers how his mother looked with her blonde hair curling around her shoulders and knows he just has to get that far. 

He begins to feel more comfortable than he’s ever felt before, short hair never really appealed to Vince even as a child, he never understood why girls should be allowed to have lovely long hair when boys were only ever allowed to have short hair. It just didn’t seem fair. For weeks the growing lengths didn’t suit him and Vince almost cut all the hair off multiple times but could never bring himself to do it. Could never bring himself to stop whatever he’d just started. 

It was as he ends of his blond hair reached his jaw Vince begun to realise how feminine it made him look, how it softened out his jawline, how the blond curls framed his face. He’d spend hours standing in front of the mirror tracing the way the strands fell in front of his eyes. 

For the first time since his mother’s death Vince felt more comfortable in his skin, not having to keep his hair short. Not having to keep his hair masculine.

 

He’s sixteen and all the girls around him have grown breasts and he hasn’t. It didn’t occur to him until not that long ago that he would never grow a pair of tits no matter how much he sometimes wanted it to happen. No matter how much he wanted to be able to wear the mini skirts and crop tops that the girls at school wore and for them to be able to fit him. He once stole (no he didn’t steal them, he borrowed them) a deep red mini skirt and a black crop top from one of the girls in the foster home that was about the same height as Vince and tried them on. There had been a sort of freedom in wearing the top and skirt that Vince had never felt before in his life until all of his attention was drawn to the bulge in the front of the skirt and the lack of bulges under the top and all Vince wanted to do was throw up.

But now he thinks he’s figured out a plan, there’s a small herd of plan ponies on his bedside table that helped him through this one. The top he bought under the pretence he was buying it for a girlfriend is more flowey than the one he tried previously, the skirt is still as tight, but the lacy underwear he’s wearing under the skirt, whilst being the most awkward thing in the world to buy, somehow begins to stop Vince from feeling as uncomfortable as he had done before.

He sneaks out though the house as quietly trying to not fall down the stairs in his heels. Just before he leaves the house he catches himself in the mirror and takes himself in for the first time. The slightly messy lines of kohl that surround his eyes, the deep red that stains his lips. And for the first time in years Vince smiles at his appearance.

Nobody in the club calls him a man, the bartender calls him miss and the man who flirted with him by ladies toilets called him a beautiful lady as he pressed kisses into Vince’s neck. It never even occurred to Vince to correct the man until Vince feels himself being pulled out of the club and into the alleyway off the main road. It’s only as the man’s hands begin to feel around the edge of his skirt that Vince stops the man from going any further. But the man presses Vince back against the wall and tells him he knows what Vince is and it’s okay, it’s okay and Vince, drunk on drinks the man’s bought for him and the fact that he’s just said that Vicnce is okay, presses as kiss to the man’s lips and lets the man drop to his knees and lift the skirt.

Vince for once manages to forget that all the other girls have tits and happily follows the man home and relishes the fact that he never refers to Vince in any masculine term whatsoever. Vince cries as the man holds him.

 

They frequent the club lots in their late teens and early twenties even when Howard shows up in their life and whisks them away to the Zooniverse. They wear skirts and dresses and silky tops every time they go. Howard never mentions anything about the unusual amount of skirts Vince owns even though they both practically live in the keepers hut. Though to be sure Vince isn’t too sure Howard’s even noticed, for all his claimed intelligence Howard can be really oblivious sometimes, but they don’t mind that he’s never brought it up, it just means they don’t have to try and define whatever it it hey feel. They’re still not entirely sure what it is they are or what the proper terms are but they’re fine with flitting from one to the other. They only know they’re not fully a man and not fully a woman. 

One morning as they’re walking to Sainsbury’s Vince passes a small clothes shop where in the window is a deep red sequined dress. It’s just their luck that the shop has one in their size and as they try it in in the dressing room of the small shop tears run down their face, slightly smudging the black eyeliner. Howard doesn’t mention that Vince doesn’t return with the crisps they went out to buy or the fact that they’d obviously been crying.

They try the dress on again that night before they go to bed, and Vince is struck by the image they see in the mirror, they don’t see themself in the mirror but their mother, in the dress Vince frost tried on when they were only a small child.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please leave comments and kudos yada yada yada. X


End file.
